e6400 bottleneck with gtx 295?

[spacecowboy9891]

I am getting a new card soon and I really like the way the gtx 295 turned out. I am currently running my e6400 at 3.0ghz but with my new cooler I am pretty sure I can get 3.6. My only question is I am wondering if the card will be bottlenecked by the cpu at 1920x1200

 

[Denithor]

Really depends on the game - if it's heavily multithreaded and needs a quad to run smoothly (SupCom, GTA 4) then yes, even with a totally ass-kicking GPU you won't get good fps. But for most games out there today you'll be fine.

 

[Cheesetogo]

It's probably going to depend on the games. I think in general, it probably won't be much of an issue. I upgraded from an Opteron 165 to a Core i7 920, with both setups using a GTX 280. The difference was not significant in most games.

 

[spacecowboy9891]

Cool

 

[FalseChristian]

For gaming only the GPU is the most important thing.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: FalseChristian
For gaming only the GPU is the most important thing.

Well...that's not quite right. You have to have at least a certain minimum of CPU or the GPU will be starved for data to render. And in some specific cases (again, SupCom & GTA 4 come to mind first) you actually need a quad to handle the load placed on the CPU.

For >90% of games today there is no tangible benefit from a quad over a dual (especially if the dual is higher clocked). But, as we progress toward more cores available, the game devs will certainly increase the multithreaded nature of their coding to take advantage of more cores so eventually quads will be supported/required for games (like dual core processors are today - remember, 2-3 years ago many games did not benefit from dual versus single core chips).

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: spacecowboy9891
I am getting a new card soon and I really like the way the gtx 295 turned out. I am currently running my e6400 at 3.0ghz but with my new cooler I am pretty sure I can get 3.6. My only question is I am wondering if the card will be bottlenecked by the cpu at 1920x1200

Yes you'll be CPU bottlenecked at 1920, as the fastest multi-GPU solutions available today will absolutely take advantage of the fastest CPUs available today. That doesn't mean you won't see an improvement over a comparable single-GPU solution, like a GTX 260 c216 or GTX 280, you just may not get the scaling and performance gains you'd expect without a faster CPU. Here's an extreme example:

Bit-Tech GTX 295 Review - Fallout 3 with 3.8GHz Core i7

These benches are done with a heavily overclocked version of the fastest retail CPU available today. What you'll notice is that not only are the top 5-6 multi-GPU solutions nearly identical in performance, overall FPS is also nearly identical from 1680 no AA all the way up to 2560 with 4xAA (79-83FPS avg max). Only at 2560 with 8xAA is there separation as the slower parts become GPU limited!

What you can also see is that a single GTX 280 isn't really that far off, averaging 50-65FPS up to 2560 No AA. So if you have a slower CPU that can only produce 55-60FPS max even at lower resolutions, you may not see much difference at all with a multi-GPU solution over a single-GPU. Again, this is an extreme example but you'll see similar even if GPU bottlenecking occurs at lower resolutions for different games.

 

[n7]

You'll be fine for most stuff, but i'd try to get that CPU as high as possible.

Games like UT3, GTA4, SupCom, etc. would be better with a quad, but they should still be okay with an OCed E6400.